Essays and Assays

How Deep Is Your Love? by Mansi Bhatia copyright © 2003 All Rights Reserved

About the author
Born in the sultry, scorching summer of ’78, I was pampered and spoiled for 24 years before stepping out of home. Travelling 23 hours in a Lufthansa airplane, I arrived in the United States of America in August 2002 to pursue my master's in journalism from The University of Iowa.

Having worked as a freelance and full-time writer for various magazines, newspapers and online media, getting back to the rigors of school life was a huge transition for me. Making adjustments to a new way of life proved easy, though, because of Brijesh, my fiance, who has been working in California since the past two years. This article is dedicated to him and to our relationship—the one stable factor in my life that has changed me for the better.

Mansi blogs at http://mansi.blogspot.com

Love to some is like a cloud
To some as strong as steel
For some a way of living
For some a way to feel
And some say love is holding on
And some say let it go
And some say love is everything
Some say they don’t know

At some stage or the other in our lives we experience the gnawing pangs of an emotion which defies definition. It's a feeling that can only be felt and not described. An overwhelming all-encompassing joy that comes saddled with its share of sadness. Love.

Given the hectic nature of our lives it’s appreciative that we even find the time to indulge in matters of the heart. But at the same time I wonder if we even understand its true depth. I remember having countless crushes while in school. My math teacher, our neighbour’s son, my best friend’s brother and oodles of others whom I fancied for the colour of their eyes, the shape of their moustaches or just the way they walked. Harmless puppy loves that are as ephemeral as soap bubbles. I can laugh about all those escapades now but at that time nothing could be more serious an affair (no pun intended) for me. Then came the stage of real relationships.

Being in an all girls' school I hardly had the opportunity to interact with members of the opposite gender, and being relatively good at studies the all-too-popular coaching centres a.k.a meeting grounds were inaccessible territory. Socials between our school and the boys’ college, therefore, would be awaited with bated breath. Those three hours of unfaltering attention by a bastion of well-groomed young gentleman provided us with enough content to talk and feel exhilarated about for the next four weeks.

And even then there was no real need of having a boyfriend.

It’s been six years now that I passed out of school and I vaguely remember only two or three batch mates "going around". We studied, we played, we lazed around watching television, we blazed the streets of Ganj when we went shopping. We were normal teenagers. But most of us (even as intrigued as we were) stayed away from the boyfriend syndrome. Yes I had many friends who were boys, but boyfriends? No way! They were to be avoided like plague.

The primary concern of course was parental infuriation. Who would want to face paternal angst against and maternal advice regarding the opposite gender? Not me.

And I somehow grew up believing that love would happen when it had to. And sure enough it did. It came at an age when I had a career, a long-term plan and a more or less settled life (and no I am not yet 25!). I was mature enough to enter a relationship which demands a lot of give and not so much of take.

Love was the edifice I built on the foundation of friendship. It took time to blossom. It took a lot of understanding, loads of sharing and caring, and plenty of affection to become what it is today. And it meant a meeting of minds. You might say that I belong to the traditional school of romance. But in my opinion, love needs to be nurtured. And it has to be distinguished from infatuations and the pleasures of the flesh.

Our parents’ generation was fed lavishly with ideals. It was an era of constraints, restraints, respect, admiration, and oodles of romance. The long skirts, the burkhas, the demure looks, the curled tresses, the composure, the sensuality, the shy glance - these are all so hauntingly remindful of a bygone era. An age where the distance between the sexes somehow managed to help preserve the sanctity of an amorous relationship.

Our generation, with its openness and fading lines of proximity, has jumped on to the bandwagon of love with so much haste that it is difficult to distinguish between physical attraction and mental compatibilities. The kind of oddities we have been exposed to via the media have fast paced our sensibilities so much, that taking things slow requires effort on our parts.

I am amazed when I hear stories of school kids bragging about the number of physical relationships they have had. I am horrified to learn that girls barely eighteen have already been in and out of seven to eight "hook ups".

I am sorry to learn about the kind of emotional baggage these kids are carrying in what are purely unemotional relationships. Some might blame the current state of affairs on peer pressure. But has anyone ever stopped to figure out where this peer pressure originates? Do any of us try and understand who is responsible for this paradigm shift? Does anyone stop and think how and when we graduated from innocent love capers of Nargis and Raj Kapoor to the raunchy antics of Kareena and Govinda?

Does anyone bother to delve into the psyche of the teenyboppers?

The mindset of this generation is all too evident in the way it handles its personal life. There are more relationships buckling under the pressures of lust than ever before. There is more focus on physical beauty than on inner charm. There is more of closeness and less of intimacy. There is more of passion and less of emotion. There is more of frivolous comradeship and less of companionship. There is more of acquiring and less of sharing. There is more of opportunism and less of selflessness.

There is more of ME and less of US.

We have hardened ourselves so much in this competitive age that we have forgotten the essence of relationships. There's much more to being someone’s beau than gifting them red roses and fifty rupee cards from Archies. What about gifting our object of affection our time, our company, our support, our friendship? What about setting priorities in our lives and focussing on each with sincerity? What about trying to be self sufficient emotionally before letting ourselves loose? What about giving ourselves, and others, time and space to forge relationships? What about working towards meaningful and lasting friendships? What about honouring our commitments? What about channelling our energies and emotions towards building lifelong bonds rather than wasting them on seasonal relationships?

We have but one life and we must experience everything that can make us stronger. True love happens once in a lifetime. And we should not have become too tired by our frivolous flings that when it comes we aren’t able to receive it with open arms.

This article first appeared in Rediff.com

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